If you would like to read an overview of the Centre, please download our Information Leaflet.
Get the latest news, activities, publications and events from our 2012 Spring Newsletter.
Building New Research Links
The Design Innovation Research Centre has been developing links with the Centre for the Mathematics of Human Behaviour. The two research teams spent an afternoon discussing their research just before Easter. A shared web-page acts as an entry point to the research of both teams at the University of Reading, which are funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) through the 'Digital Economy' Programme.
For more information www.reading.ac.uk/digital-economy.
Research Day
The Design Innovation Research Centre has recently held an internal research day, building research capacity to achieve its vision of a new mode of design in the digital economy.
Researchers are all working on topics relevant to implementing Building Information Modelling (BIM). This full day workshop, on Thursday 16 February 2012, created an open forum for research staff and PhD students to discuss their work-in-progress; and it's relevance to achieving the government agenda of implementing BIM level 2 by 2016.
The team, and invited visitors, presented research approaches and topics; research questions, methods, and findings. These were discussed and critiqued to identify common research challenges and the synergies between projects. The ten projects discussed included PhD work on:
- BIM and professions
- Sustainable design as institutional work
- BIM at an industry change level
- Social media meets BIM
- Information management in CrossRail
- Standard development for BIM
- Analysing visual practices in immersive collaboration
The discussion across projects drew out issues relevant to the ongoing research on current projects and the formulation of new research on digital design interfaces and achieving client value.
Alice Comi to join the team as a Visiting Research Fellow
Alice Comi will join the team as a visiting Research Fellow from April 2012 to March 2014 to study Visual Objects and Practices in Inter-organizational Teamwork. She has won a prestigious Swiss post-doctoral research fellowship, funded by Fonds National Suisse de la Recherche Scientifique (SNSF), and will conduct a case study in a major UK construction project. Her PhD work was supervised by Martin Eppler from University of St. Gallen, Switzerland and relates to visual practices and knowledge communication.
Olympic Delivery Authority's Learning Legacy Programme launch
The Olympic Delivery Authority's Learning Legacy Programme was launched on 18 October at the Institution of Civil Engineers. The research team worked as part of this programme to capture lessons on data handover. A summary of this research is now available at the Learning Legacy website.
Recognition of importance of digital practices in engineering education
The UK engineering accreditation body, the Joint Board Moderators (JBM) have adopted a 'Good Practice Guidance on Digital Technologies' that was drafted by Dr Whyte on behalf of the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE) Information Systems Panel. The JBM was formed by the ICE, Institution of Structural Engineers, Chartered Institution of Highways and Transportation, and Institute of Highway Incorporated Engineers and accredits related engineering programmes in the UK to regulate the engineering profession. Its adoption of the guidance as a good practice guide JBM115 is a recognition of the increasing significance of digital practices in engineering.
Read the Good Practice Guidance on Digital Technologies.